Salon #38 – Duane Michals and Adam Fuss

21 February 2019: 10×10 held a salon with Duane Michals and Adam Fuss at the home of Richard and Ronnie Grosbard.

Portrait of Duane Michals
Portrait of Duane Michals © Duane Michals.

Duane Michals (b. 1932, McKeesport, PA) is one of the great photographic innovators of the last century, widely known for his work with series, multiple exposures, and text. Beginning in the ’60s, an era of photojournalism, Michals manipulated the medium to communicate narratives with his sequences, appropriating cinema’s frame-by-frame format. He also incorporated handwritten text as a key component, giving voice to his singular musings, which are poetic, tragic, and humorous – often all at once. Michals received a BA from the University of Denver in 1953 and worked as a graphic designer until his involvement with photography deepened in the late 1950s. He currently lives and works in New York City – and is concentrating on making short films.

Portrait of Adam Fuss
Portrait of Adam Fuss ©Andrea Blanch.

Adam Fuss (b. 1961) has refined a camera-less technique in his work, relying on the most basic infrastructure of photography: objects, light, and light-sensitive material. His work includes photograms of water droplets, smoke, flowers, christening gowns, and birds captured in flight. He is also known for reviving the laborious daguerreotype technique, with breathtaking results. His work is illustrated in several monographs, among them Adam Fuss and My Ghost. His work is included in the collections of MOMA, Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum, and SFMoMA, among many others.

A big thank you to Richard and Ronny Grosbard for hosting us.

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Duane Michals

Adam Fuss